If You Know, Then I Know
by loki-laufeyson-of-asgard
Summary: Tyler and the Narrator have to walk home in the rain. There are unforeseen consequences.


**just so there's no confusion, i do also publish all of these ficlets on my tumblr, astralhux, in case anyone's seen them on there**

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We don't usually carry money around anymore, since most places let us have what we want free of charge, but I guess it's kind of a dumb strategy, because one night as we're leaving the movies it starts to rain, and the bus driver is an old man who's probably never even heard of Fight Club. He gives us this look when we step in, drenched and shivering.

"Fifty cents, son," he says.

I'm sorry, I don't—

He lifts his eyebrows. He's keeping the doors open.

Please, I say, gesturing outside, c'mon, it's raining.

"Plenty of places to wait 'til it stops," he says. "Get off my bus."

"Let me deal with him," Tyler mutters in my ear.

I don't even want to know what you mean by that, I say, ignoring the helpful images he's trying to show me.

"I said, 'get off my bus,'" the old man repeats. "Seems pretty clear to me."

Tyler's irritation flashes through me. I can feel him curling his hand into a fist and before it can get ugly I turn, bumping his shoulder so he'll move. I have to wait for him to go, and the driver says:

"Get a move on, son. It's late."

We spill out onto the drenched sidewalk. The wind is making the rain come down sideways. It dampens the ends of Tyler's hair and gathers in the creases of his jacket. We watch the unforgiving bus drive off. It disappears into the darkness. My shoes are already filled with water.

Tyler says, "Fuck him."

Don't do anything, I beg. I can feel my teeth chattering. Please, Tyler.

Tyler gives me a look.

I'm freezing, I say. I just wanna go home.

In the smeared orange glare of the streetlamp I see—and feel—him roll his eyes. But he shrugs. "All right," he says. I don't know if I believe him. But the rain's plastered my clothes flat against my skin and I don't have a choice.

He takes off his jacket and holds it over my head as we start down the sidewalk. We can't run; it's too wet, and my knee is aching. Let me, he keeps saying, in our head, which he rarely does, liking the sound of his own voice too much. Let me take over. It's rare he asks for anything either, but I don't give in—

Stubborn, psychotic fool.

The rain refuses to slacken. At one point as we're walking just on the edge of a street a car passes too close and drenches us in filthy water dredged up from the asphalt and the sewers. "Asshole!" Tyler yells, waving his arms, but there's no visibility, and even with his red leather over his head he goes unnoticed. Beside him I'm shivering, trying to hide it, but he notices—of course—and drapes the jacket over my shoulders, ruffling my hair, spraying water.

Let me, he says again, as we round the corner onto Paper Street, and with the water ankle-deep in the street, gushing through the sewers, that terrible hollow sound—I acquiesce. I can't help it. My knee is throbbing.

"Finally," he says, louder than the rain. There's the sensation of being lifted. The next thing I'm aware of we're in the house, and I'm being herded up the stairs. His hand is on my back, cold through the layers of clothes.

"You're such an idiot," he says as we enter the bathroom and he starts stripping my clothes off.

"I could've forced that driver to let us ride," he says.

Don't, I mutter to my feet.

"Don't be an idiot next time, then," he says.

You're the one who always says we don't need money or an umbrella because we're always out at night anyway, _idiot, _I counter. He snorts, far less annoyed with me than I'd like; then his hands catch on my hips where he's tugging my shirt up, and I forget to be irritated.

In the morning I wake up feeling sloggy, pain concentrated under my eyes, ears itching. His arm is slung around my waist as usual but it feels like a furnace, and he's making odd hitching noises as he breathes.

I nudge his ribs and he jerks against me, waking, leaving a trail of saliva on my shoulder—one of those moments where I just have to wonder what the _fuck _is going on outside my own perception of things. "Hmzat," he says. His voice sounds thick with something.

I roll over enough so I can thunk my head against his collarbone. We're sick, I say.

"Sick?" Tyler sits up, though not fast enough that I get shoved off. The shift in positions knocks something around in my chest and I start coughing, burying it in the blankets. He tries patting my back, but he's coughing, too.

Interesting.

Interesting, I try to say between coughs.

"What," he says, leaning back against the pillows.

I don't even bruise the same way you do, I say. I don't know why we'd both get sick.

He's quiet for a second. "Your imagination sucks," he says, finally, and we both laugh. It gets broken by another bout of coughing, and then I'm tired, so I lean back against him. He's too hot, and I'm already having trouble breathing without my face pressed against his chest, but it's the most comfortable place I know.

Get off, he mumbles in our head. You're warm.

Make me, I say, and close my eyes.

Hey, he says, as I feel him closing his own. That's not fair.

I open my mouth to respond, but his arm tightens a little around my ribs, and I fall asleep instead.

It's later when I wake the second time—the sun shifted from one side of the house to the other, so that our room—no longer _Tyler's _room—is swathed in golden light sifting through the drawn curtains. The dust makes me sneeze into the sleeve of Tyler's chamois robe—one of the few things he owns that's physically real. I wonder why I'm wearing it. Then I realize he's not in here. I sit up, alarmed, and cough. I want a cigarette for no reason. My skin feels too tight.

Tyler, I call.

He appears in the doorway, sweating, frowning. "What."

What.

"You were supposed to be asleep."

I'm also supposed to be one person, I point out, and he rolls his eyes.

"I was downstairs making us eggs and juice," he says. "You were supposed to be sleeping."

You already said— I start, but then I get it. I reach up and rub at my eyes, watering from the fever and from exhaustion. He's chewing his lower lip, watching me. His face is flushed because my face is flushed. I reach out my hand.

Tyler.

He walks to me. He takes my hand. His thumb presses to the scar. His skin is radiating heat.

"What if you leave me," he says.

I'm not going to—

"But you have no control over that." The tight panic in his voice scares me more than anything else he's ever done—more than burning my hand with lye, more than blowing up credit card companies, more than knocking me out for a week while he flew around the country. I can't stand him looking at me like that, and I try for levity:

You should approve of that. Lack of control.

He wrenches his hand from mine. "Well, if you _want _it."

Tyler—

But he's already out the door. I have to disentangle myself from the sheets where they've stuck to my thighs with sweat. By the time I get downstairs he's pacing up and down in the kitchen. Eggs are congealing in a dirty pan on the stove. The carton of orange juice is open on the table where we used to make soap.

Hey—

"Look, if I can't keep from getting sick just because you are and if I can't keep you down while I'm trying to do shit for us then I don't know—" Deep breath. His hand in his greasy hair. (My hand in my greasy hair.) "I don't know where that's going to leave us."

I take another breath. I'm sweating through my shirt and I take off his robe. The fever has my eyes stinging so I lean against the wall by the phone, cool plaster on my skin. You've already left, I say. It would probably be easy enough for you.

He laughs a kind of desperate sick laugh and when I look at him he's glaring at me, equal parts furious and terrified. "You are so—you're just—"

I'm just you, Tyler.

(I am Jack's fear.)

"You're not just me, though. Are you. You _shot _me."

Yeah, like a fucking year ago— I break off into another bout of coughing. I feel his hand on my back, pounding, his voice rising:

"You tried to get rid of me once. You've been separating yourself from me like glycerin off fat." I wonder which of us is supposed to be the glycerin. The part that, combined with another element, makes things explode.

"You know what it's like without me," he says.

I know, I say, wiping spit off my mouth, trying to stand. I hate it.

He's staring at me.

I've already told you I'm not interested in that life, I say, waving my hand out the window. Whatever shit—I don't want it. What happened a year ago was a mistake, you dumbass. I glance at the now cold eggs in their pan. I'm sorry I ruined your breakfast, but you know you can make another one. You're not going anywhere. I hesitate. Are you?

He bites his mouth. He's breathing through it. "No," he says, finally.

Okay, I say.

"Okay," he says.

He steps forward to hug me and I sneeze, violently, onto his bare shoulder. We both laugh about it a little, forgoing the eggs and the juice entirely so we can walk back upstairs for another bath. He still smokes in the tub. He hacks his way through half a cigarette before giving the other half to me. We shiver in each other's arms in the bed, wrapped in chamois and those filthy slippers he has and my ancient flannel robe. I press my hands to the sharp cut of his hips where the skin is fever-slick and blazing.

You're an idiot, I murmur, half-awake, much later.

Only because you are, he mutters back, and we're both still laughing gently when I slide into Tyler's oblivion.


End file.
